Dine and Dash (but not really)
by caynaise
Summary: Rinko decides it's high time she embraces the ramen life. Arisa is her guide. Oh, and she's cute too.


**Originally written for Bandori Rarepair Week 2019, Day 1: Firsts**

* * *

"Hold on," says Arisa. "You want me to get ramen . . . with you?"

Rinko twists her hands in front of her. This seemed like a better idea in her head at three in the morning when she was nigh delirious, eyes barely open and glazed over like a cake but glued to her screen nonetheless. "I'm sorry . . . if it's too sudden . . ."

"Argh, no! That came out wrong." Arisa tugs at a pigtail in frustration. "I meant—you want to go for ramen with _me_?"

"Oh." Rinko sighs, relieved, and brightens. "Yes. I'd like that very much. I've never been . . . to a ramen shop. I never brought it up to anyone and . . . I couldn't go by myself." Besides, Rinko did her research. Even if said research simply involved paying attention to a passing remark at just the right time. "If I'm not mistaken, you're familiar with those sorts of places, aren't you?"

"Huh? What are y—" Halfway through an automatic denial, Arisa stops, sharp brown eyes snapping to a quick realisation. "Did . . . did the former student council president tell you that?"

"She did . . . Should she not have?" Rinko shrinks back a little, wondering if she's already overstepped a boundary. Boundaries are important to Arisa, she's observed, more so than to a lot of people.

"W-Well—"

She watches Arisa's face travel through several pretty shades of pink out of the corner of her eye, pale at first and deepening into scarlet. It's quite endearing, that gradual creeping colour like the feeling of warming your hands under a futon.

"I mean, it doesn't really matter now," Arisa gets out at last after a silent and intense battle with herself. "I uh—yeah, sure. I'll go with you."

So they find themselves standing before a modest shopfront adorned with just a sign in black calligraphic font that isn't easily discernible from the wood behind it. But the delicious aroma wafting from beyond the narrow doorway is enough to make Rinko's knees weak. If there's one thing she's certain of right now, disoriented though she is from blindly tailing Arisa through the moderately busy streets, it's that she really shouldn't have waited seventeen years for this moment. Years of convenience store cup ramen consumed in dangerous proximity of her computer, noodles basking in soup and more often than not left forgotten to inflate to monstrous proportions and then grow cold and limp and sad. She's had her share of accidents too, of course. A shock defeat, an ambush from behind—one jerk of her arm and bye bye keyboard—hope you can swim. (Not her instrument though. She would never recover from the guilt.)

But now. Now she's about to find out what it's like to truly _live_.

Arisa slides the wooden door all the way open and steps inside, glancing over her shoulder to check if Rinko's following.

Of course she is. The wonderful smell of pork and miso and chilli oil and myriad other flavours are even stronger inside, and for a moment she almost forgets about the people. Almost. Not that they're doing much, really, just slurping at their bowls with an impressive amount of concentration. Before she can get stuck in a rut thinking too hard, she turns to Arisa, who's standing in front of the vending machine just inside the entrance.

"This . . . doesn't talk, does it?" she can't stop herself from asking.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Arisa swings around, pigtails bouncing on her shoulders. It's sort of cute, she notes dimly. "Oh, like the ones with automated voices?"

Rinko nods.

"Oh, it's not one of those. You just press the buttons."

Buttons. Choices. So many of them. Rinko shuts the thoughts out, observing what Arisa does with laser focus. Click, click, click. Shio base, all the standard toppings . . . and three whole eggs. Her mouth twitches.

Arisa bends over to pick up her ticket from the dispenser under all the buttons and steps to the side. "Alright, your turn."

Her turn. She steps up to the machine, raising an uncertain hand, and sees another girl walk in and stop behind her. Her stomach suddenly develops the ability to perform a perfectly choreographed gymnastics routine. She looks back at the machine hurriedly. "Um . . . umm . . ."

"I-It's alright, Rinko-senpai! I'd go for the popular choice if you can't decide."

Somehow she locates the button, somehow she makes a few jabs and the machine rumbles and spits and she's got a ticket. Not before the girl behind them burns a hole in her back with her eyes though.

Once they've handed their orders over to the staff and she's stumbled into a seat beside Arisa, all she can think to say is, "That was mortifying."

Arisa waves her hands. "You're fine! Really! Once I wasn't paying attention and got toppings with no noodles. See if you can top that."

Rinko doesn't know if she laughs more at the joke or the look on Arisa's face, both smug and mildly embarrassed, but it does make her feel better. Then she wonders if she's a terrible person for laughing at someone else's expense. "You didn't starve, did you?"

"I was too hungry to care about what anyone thought. In fact I ordered an extra bowl with extra everything out of spite." Arisa slaps a hand over her mouth as soon as the words slip out, flushing. Rinko has to wonder if she isn't secretly a reptile, what with how wildly the temperature of her face fluctuates.

"Is . . . something wrong?" she asks.

Arisa considers for a moment. "No, it's just. Unladylike." The words come out muffled against her fingers.

"Is that so? It would be nice if I had room for more than one bowl right now," Rinko says with perfect honesty. She indulges in a deep whiff of the steamy air. "I have a feeling I'll want more."

Arisa takes her hand away from her mouth. "Oh. Really?"

Great, so now they've both established themselves as gluttons. That's one thing Rinko can cross off her bucket list.

She can't deny that it's kind of nice though, hanging out with someone else for whom social gaffes are second nature.

Also, she can't stop staring at those pigtails. Eye contact for more than a second is still a no-go, but at least those perfectly curled strands of gold are a viable second option.

She's spared the need to answer by the arrival of their food. Convenient, too, that she can tell herself the redness in her cheeks is a consequence of too much steam wafting from her volcanic bowl.

The flavours hit her all at once. She bends over her noodles and soaks in the splendid olfactory assault, and is only called back to reality by a loud _sluuurp _from beside her.

In the middle of a generous mouthful of a little bit of everything in her bowl (how did she do that?), Arisa freezes, cheeks bulging like a chipmunk's. She hurriedly turns away and swallows, coughs and slowly swivels back around.

"It'll. Get cold if you don't start eating," she points out discreetly.

"Oh! Right." It's getting harder and harder for Rinko to tear her gaze from that _hair_. If only the girl it's attached to would stop moving around so much.

She won't, though, because she's Arisa, and Arisa is a constant nervous wreck, and every time she turns her head a bit of light catches on liquid gold and freezes Rinko's brain more lethally than any opponent she's faced in NFO.

Focus on the food, Rinko.

Wielding her chopsticks as she would her trusty mage's staff, she catches a bunch of noodles and a slice of pork between them and lifts them into the air. The hot rush of steam cascades upwards just inches away from her face. Thick noodles shine under the lights, coated in the creamiest broth she's ever seen in her life.

Getting them in her mouth is a different story. The broth clings to the corners of her lips and she's overestimated the amount she can physically cram in at once. As divine as the first mouthful tastes, a good minute crawls by before she's done with it, carefully guiding the last of it past her lips.

"Do you like it?" Arisa asks, probably mistaking her incompetence for reluctance.

Rinko wipes her mouth with a napkin. "It's . . . amazing."

The way Arisa's face lights up at that melts her like that heavenly piece of pork.

"Right?" Arisa bursts out. "You know, it's even better when you, well—"

"Slurp?"

"Yeah."

Rinko eyes her bowl. "I . . ." For all of Arisa's embarrassment earlier, maybe she's the one overly concerned about being 'unladylike,' as Arisa called it—or drawing attention to herself, as she would put it.

But if doing this lays Arisa's fears to rest, it's worth every ounce of humiliation. Arisa is so much more than she gives herself credit for. She just doesn't see it.

So Rinko snaps her chopsticks to attention once again, picks up a sizable portion of noodles, takes a deep breath, and sucks them into her mouth. Arisa's right. It tastes even better this way. But she's not at her limit just yet.

With every mouthful she's bolder, making more noise than she's ever dared. This is strangely . . . fun. Then she hears the sounds echoed beside her, and looks up at the radiant grin on Arisa's face before a stream of noodles whips cleanly into her mouth like one of those self-retracting tape measures.

Giggling, Rinko mimics her to the best of her ability, and they laugh and almost forget they're in a public space until someone snaps that they're taking too long.

Rinko stammers an apology and looks at her hands, and Arisa immediately swallows all three of the eggs she saved for last at lightning speed before they hightail it out of there.

"Ah man . . ." Arisa sighs, leaning against the wall once they're outside. "I didn't even get to taste those eggs."

"You really like eggs, don't you, Ichigaya-san?"

"I-I guess you could say that."

Rinko joins her by the wall, settling a little closer to her than she would normally, but Arisa doesn't move away. "We got yelled at, didn't we?"

Arisa laughs. "Sure did. Somehow I don't feel bad about it though."

"Strange," says Rinko, turning her eyes skyward. "Neither do I."


End file.
